Tag Archives: O&M

First Solar and Power Electronics have finalized an agreement to utilize First Solar’s PV Operations & Maintenance (O&M) team to provide Power Electronics warranty service on inverters installed throughout the United States. This unique relationship enables tangible owner value by reducing response time and repair time.

The arrangement allows Power Electronics to strengthen its customer support with the backing of First Solar Energy Services’ technical resource team. First Solar will provide field support on Power Electronics inverters installed at more than 50 solar power plants, many of which are already operated and maintained by First Solar Energy Services.

“This collaboration aligns two organizations that share the same commitment to service excellence,” said Timo Moeller, Director of First Solar Energy Services. “Pairing Power Electronics equipment with First Solar’s scale and proven field expertise results in unmatched service structure in the PV industry.”

Moeller said that pairing Power Electronics inverters with First Solar O&M services results in lower operational cost and greater efficiency in plant maintenance.

Soiling of the panel glass is one of the major problems in the rapidly expanding solar energy market, with the attendant loss of efficiency and reduction in performance ratios. Now, there’s a new, simple and very cost-effective alternative. Based on Kipp & Zonen’s unique Optical Soiling Measurement (OSM) technology, DustIQ can be easily added to new or existing solar arrays and integrated into plant management systems. The unit is mounted to the frame of a PV panel and does not need sunlight to operate. It continuously measures the transmission loss through glass caused by soiling, so that the reduction in light reaching the solar cells can be calculated.

Know exactly when and where to clean

DustIQ measures the soiling ratio (SR), which can be translated to power loss in real time. This enables the plant operation and maintenance staff to know when a critical level of soiling is reached and it has become necessary to start cleaning procedures. DustIQ needs no maintenance and is cleaned in the same way, and at the same time, as the panels around it.

Large solar parks have different soiling rates across the site, which is why IEC 61724-1 requires multiple measurement points. The significantly lower purchase, installation and maintenance costs of DustIQ compared to traditional systems make this much more economic, so that cleaning can be scheduled when and where it is needed.

DustIQ communicates digitally via Modbus and has an input for an optional back panel temperature sensor. It can be networked with Kipp & Zonen Smart pyranometers for irradiance measurements and be integrated into a plant SCADA system.

The performance ratio of PV panels is primarily determined by four main parameters; the incoming solar irradiance, the cell (back panel) temperature, the soiling ratio and the power produced. So, DustIQ really is the missing link.

MaestrOS provides out-of-the-box integration with siloed, distributed and real-time data into a curated data model. It links unmatched data curation capabilities with a CIM-compliant common data model, integrates Utopus Insights’ hyper-local weather forecasting service and supports the company’s product families. It includes state-of-the-art authentication and data security, and features published, public and secured APIs and intuitive visualization to work in harmony with a customer’s existing enterprise systems and to leverage their team’s expertise.

Xplore for Wind/Solar—See how all assets are performing in real-time on a single dashboard.

Xplore is a family of applications that delivers precise situational awareness by providing historical and real-time insights into solar and wind asset performance across an entire asset fleet – no matter the location, size or OEM of the assets. It provides intuitive visualizations that you can configure to suit operational performance metrics with personalized, instant alerts through a patented, innovative performance-modeling capability. Xplore seamlessly scales up to an entire fleet, drills down to a single asset or reviews at any operational level in-between to assess operational performance.

Pulse for Wind/Solar—Determine what’s going to break or fail before it breaks or fails.

Pulse is a one-stop predictive maintenance application suite that enables you to identify, prioritize and preempt critical wind/solar component failure across a customer’s entire enterprise. Pulse goes beyond time- or condition-based maintenance analytics and uses patented algorithms to deliver risk-based insights into remaining component life for over 20 asset classes including inverters, transformers, generators, bearings and other mechanical/electrical equipment. It helps improve asset performance, system reliability and target capital investment to provide the greatest value.

HyperCast for Wind/Solar—Reliable renewable energy delivery in an unreliable climate.

HyperCast is a forecasting tool family that uses unsupervised, advanced machine learning on real-time wind and solar farm measurement data. It delivers a 72-hour advance forecast, updated every 10 minutes, for both available and active power generation with best-in-class MAE (Mean Absolute Error) results. HyperCast enables power quality improvement, congestion reduction and reduced downtime by syncing maintenance work to low-production days with up to a 14-day lead time. HyperCast enables customers to leverage market imbalances, sharpen day-ahead and intra-day bid strategies, and quickly identify and resolve asset production anomalies. These results are driven by hyper-local and energy-specific weather service (Nostradamus), that delivers 10-minute interval weather predictions up to 96 hours in advance at each solar farm location and each wind turbine location and hub height.

Nostradamus—Get a precise weather-wise peek into the future.

This is the hyper-local weather forecasting service. Nostradamus forecasts enable more informed decisions on where to preposition response assets, more accurate information to be shared with customers, communities and other key stakeholders, and ultimately reduce service restoration time. It runs a physics-based dynamic model on an HPCC (High-Performance Computing Cluster) to generate forecasts up to 96 hours in advance, at a 10-minute temporal resolution with an industry-leading level of precision down to 1 km². The tool can be quickly linked to a customer’s GIS-mapped assets, and can be made available as a SaaS within five business days.

“With 3.2 GW of photovoltaics in operation at the end of Q3 2017, MaxGen Energy Services is the top independent PV O&M service provider, both in the U.S. and globally. MaxGen shot up in the vendor rankings by almost doubling its fleet in the first three quarters of 2017, increasing its managed capacity at a pace of 2 GW per year. This is the fastest growth recorded by any provider among the 128 O&M firms analyzed in my latest report,” said Cedric Brehaut from SOLICHAMBA, the industry’s preeminent analyst and author of the newly released GTM Research report.

“MaxGen is focused on ensuring that solar becomes a mainstream and enduring component of the global energy landscape,” noted MaxGen Energy Services CEO Mark McLanahan. “We’re working to ensure a mature, stable service infrastructure that optimizes system performance and profitability; our customers and partners recognize and appreciate our expertise.”

MaxGen is extending its offerings to become the leading services provider for a wide array of clean energy assets (e.g., solar, wind, EV infrastructure) already operating and coming online across North America. The company has experienced tremendous growth, as it transforms the future of solar and distributed energy industry – though superior services delivered by a seasoned team with extensive experience in solar, wind and EV charging infrastructure.

“With 3.2 GW of photovoltaics in operation at the end of Q3 2017, MaxGen Energy Services is the top independent PV O&M service provider, both in the U.S. and globally. MaxGen shot up in the vendor rankings by almost doubling its fleet in the first three quarters of 2017, increasing its managed capacity at a pace of 2 GW per year. This is the fastest growth recorded by any provider among the 128 O&M firms analyzed in my latest report,” said Cedric Brehaut from SOLICHAMBA, the industry’s preeminent analyst and author of the newly released GTM Research report.

“MaxGen is focused on ensuring that solar becomes a mainstream and enduring component of the global energy landscape,” noted MaxGen Energy Services CEO Mark McLanahan. “We’re working to ensure a mature, stable service infrastructure that optimizes system performance and profitability; our customers and partners recognize and appreciate our expertise.”

MaxGen is extending its offerings to become the leading services provider for a wide array of clean energy assets (e.g., solar, wind, EV infrastructure) already operating and coming online across North America. The company has experienced tremendous growth, as it transforms the future of solar and distributed energy industry – though superior services delivered by a seasoned team with extensive experience in solar, wind and EV charging infrastructure.